Plain Or Pan

What we have here is 2 bands at polar opposites, yet united by a crappy tenuous connection.  Firstly, we have Pavement. Shambolic college rock from the U. S. of A. with a neat line in whiny vocals and spidery guitar lines.

Then we have the La’s. Perfectionists to the nth degree, they were desperate to create the perfect album that sounded like Merseybeat mixed with Captain Beefheart and the Delta Blues – the sound of the Merseyssippi as Lee Mavers  was keen on saying in every interview he did between 1987 and 1990.

The link? Echo and the Bunnymen. Pavement covered ‘The Killing Moon’ in 1997 for a BBC session. It’s a pretty straightforward version, a bit slower and trippy than the original, with added whoops that make it sound a bit like New Order in places. Get it here. 

In 1987, in their quest for the Mersyssippi, the La’s turned to Pete de Freitas, the Bunnymen’s drummer and fellow Scouser to help produce some sessions. Did you know that ‘Echo’ of Echo and the Bunymen was the name of their drum machine before Pete joined? I digress…. Anyway, the sessions did not produce anything classic though all La’s songs you know and love were tried. The sessions are often referred to as the ‘Echo’ sessions, given that de Freitas chucked a big bucket of reverb and echo over the vocal tracks. In some ways it adds to the tracks, in other ways it kind of spoils them. Anyway, here you’ll find a version of ‘Callin’ All’ that sounds like Love or ‘We Love You’-era Rolling Stones and clatters along in a vaguely psychedelic fashion. ‘Callin’ All’ was meant to be the name of the La’s debut until they dropped this song at the last minute.  I can tell you loads of La’s stories and useless information, and I have a treasure trove full of La’s stuff which will see the light of day at some point. In the meantime, enjoy ‘Callin’ All’ and keep coming back. Cheers!

I’m striking while the iron’s hot here. Thanks to all my new visitors from the Teenage Fanclub website for boosting my numbers on these pages. As a one-off, never to be repeated treat, please find attached a link to Teenage Fanclub’s version of Nirvana’s ‘About A Girl’.

I taped it from BBC Radio Scotland’s Beat Patrol show years ago, and a few months ago I got around to transferring it from tape to mp3. For what it’s worth, I think this version’s better than the original. It features some laid back vocals and some pretty rudimentary slide guitar that sounds as if (Raymond? Norman?) just learned how to play slide guitar about 10 minutes beforehand. Of course, half of the appeal of TFC is that at any minute it sounds like it could all fall apart. At least it was in the early days, maybe not so much nowadays. But this track holds well together, right up until the final demented slide guitar riff wheezes off into the ether. Here you go.

For as long as I can remember, at least since I first heard it and perhaps even longer, I’ve always loved Todd Rundgren’s ‘I Saw The Light’. To many people this would appear to be one of those guilty pleasures, but for me, there’s nothing guilty about it. It’s simply a great wee pop song, all soaring harmonies and 70’s guitar.

Then I read that Teenage Fanclub had recorded a version of it. Recorded in 1991 for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie or TV show (can’t quite remember) but never released. I. Had. To. Have. It. I had everything by Teenage Fanclub up to that point (and still do). 7″ of ‘Everything Flows’? Check! 7″ of ‘Ballad Of John & Yoko’? Check! Australian Promo video for Star Sign? Check! You name it, I’ve got it. So I had to have Teenage Fanclub, my favourite band, doing my favourite song. But could I find it? Could I hell. I thought the internet was invented for this sort of thing, but clearly not. I turned up many an interesting Teenage Fanclub oddity along the way. Live American Radio shows, old BBC Scotland sessions I had taped off the radio way back in the day, the Clydesmen doing ‘Kylie’s Got a Crush On Us’ that I had on a Select magazine tape. Even the hard-to-get joint 7″ with Alex Chilton that was sold throught the NME in around 1991/1992. Now I could listen to them all on my iPod! Great! But nowhere could I find ‘I Saw The Light’. I had given up all hope of ever hearing it until…….2005. Then the Scotland On Sunday gave away a free 6 Track Teenage Fanclub CD, and there, hiding at number 5, not even the lead track, was ‘I Saw the Light’. On first hearing it I was somewhat underwhelmed. “It sounds just like Todd’s,” I thought. And it did. And it still does. But it’s magic. See the light for yourself here.

Anyone with a reasonably good set of ears will know that ‘Vauxhall & I’ is by far Morrissey’s best solo work. Only just ahead of ‘Your Arsenal’, but much, much better than the over-rated ‘You Are The Quarry’ it is a classic of sorts. Released in 1994, the playing, the songwriting and the vocal delivery all come together on a near-perfect wee album. It kicks with the melancholic majesty of ‘Now My Heart Is Full’ and gets better as every new track comes in. The singles released from the album were all (in my head) number 1 smashes. All (in reality) were not what could be called ‘chart botherers’. The first single ‘The More You Ignore Me’ went in at a respectable number 8. ‘Hold On To Your Friends’ did less well. Straight in at 47 before tumbling to 74 and off the radar forever. Which is where we come in. You see. On the b-side was Morrissey’s version of ‘Moon River’ All 9 minutes and 38 seconds of it. He croons! He swoons! He goes on a wee bit! But it’s magic. For a while, the inclusion of this track meant that ‘Hold On To Your Friends’ was a reasonably valuable Morrissey single to own. However, a quick trawl through eBay shows it is not quite as sought after as it once was. Nonetheless, your life is not complete until you’ve heard it. So here it is, in all it’s majestic glory.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I think the Trashcan Sinatras are just about the best band ever. Of course, they’ll never ‘make it’, whatever that is, but in years to come, someone somewhere will stumble across a copy of ‘Weightlifting’ and think “Where have they been all my life?” They’re a Velvet Underground waiting to happen. Seriously. ‘Snow’ is a bit of an obscurity amongst the collected works of the Trashcan Sinatras. It’s much sought after in Trashcans circles and as rare as a winning lottery ticket in my house. Naturally, I have a copy. On super-sexy 7” vinyl. Japanese Promotional copy no less. If you could get record Top Trumps this would be my winning hand. Released only in Japan and recorded with some percussion-playing Japanese musicians, it isn’t the definitive sounding Trashcans record. It wouldn’t be the first thing I’d play to someone who’d never heard them (try All The Dark Horses or Country Air from Weightlifting), but that’s no reason to give it a body swerve. Written by Randy Newman, it builds on moody atmospherics, some Doors-y sounding Fender Rhodes (I think) and some nice understated slide guitar playing. It sounds like angels crying in heaven in some places. It’s that good. Listen to it here and pass it on. Harry Nilsson does a version that sounds like ‘Surf’s Up’ era Beach Boys. Quiet, restrained and accompanied by Randy Newman on the piano. It’s a bit rough round the edges and sounds like a demo that was recorded at the end of a long day’s drinking. Which is my way of saying “Tom Waits”. Good, but not a patch on the criminally ignored Trashcans.

*stop press!

Wow! So many  downloads of this track. Nice to see so many lurkers out there. Don’t be scared to leave a comment the next time.